3 Landing Page Metrics That Actually Matter

The goal of a landing page is obviously to attract and convert users. But how do you measure that success?

Beyond the basic conversion rate statistic, which metrics are most valuable and how can you use them to direct future campaigns? These are questions you need to ask yourself if you want to continue to improve.

Putting the Landing Page in Perspective

The problem for so many businesses is that they don’t really understand the purpose of their landing pages. Sure, they want to drive traffic and sales, but how will that ultimately happen? Do you have concrete expectations when you build and launch a landing page?

“These expectations can be based on previous experience, anecdotal evidence or simply wishful thinking,” writes Cameron Chapman, freelance designer, blogger and author. “But it’s helpful to have a specific number to compare your actual results with.”

It’s possible to have more than one goal, but be wary of aiming for too many at once. The more concentrated your efforts are, the more accurate your analysis will be.

Secondly, in order to analyze your landing page’s metrics, you need a CTA. If you don’t have a clear understanding of your CTA, then neither do your visitors. Hone in on a single CTA, and make it so obvious and visible that it can’t be missed.

Look at These 3 Metrics

If you have precise expectations and a clear CTA, you’ll find it much easier to analyze the metrics you garner from the landing page. Generally speaking, you’ll want to keep an eye on the following metrics when reviewing page analytics:

Average time on page. If you’re not careful, you can look at average time on page metrics and get a completely wrong impression of how your landing page is doing. By default, most analytics tools (Google Analytics included) only record the time spent on a page when the visitor navigates to another page on the same domain. If a visitor lands on your page, sticks around for 15 minutes, follows through with a goal, and bounces, their average time on site will be marked as 0.00. This distorts your data and leaves you with an inaccurate snapshot.The best solution is to use Google’s Event Tracking API tool (which starts tracking after a visitor has been on site for 10 seconds).

Lead-to-customer conversion rate. For landing pages that ask visitors to opt-in with an email address before being given an offer to purchase something, the lead-to-customer conversion rate is important. This will tell you what portion of leads actually become customers by following through with the primary CTA.If you have traditionally low lead-to-customer conversion rates and typically ask visitors to click through to another page to make a purchase, you might want to consider on-page selling. Certain tools, like Spaces, allow you to directly monetize leads without asking them to leave the landing page.

Bounce rate. It may seem like a basic metric, but the bounce rate is one of the most important metrics to accurately understand. Without some perspective, you can easily come away with a skewed understanding of your page. That’s because bounce rates don’t take time on site into account. By default, a user who sticks around for only five seconds will be counted equally to a user who stays for 10 minutes and bounces. You wouldn’t want to count the latter user as a bounce, as they obviously stuck around for a long time.The solution is to tweak some code in your Google Analytics account. This tweak will predetermine a time threshold, after which users will no longer be considered bounces.

Conclusion

The right perspective, combined with the knowledge of which metrics actually matter, will allow you to accurately and precisely understand the performance of your landing pages.

Next time you’re reviewing landing page analytics, keep these three metrics in mind.

Comments

Love that you highlighted the metrics that marketers should be looking at when gauging their landing pages—it’s definitely something that’s underrated and that we don’t see enough of!

I work at Unbounce, and to add to your post, we’ve actually created a Landing Page Analyzer that grades pages based on a few categories (like copywriting!) and generates a free personalized report on how to make it better to get more conversions.

Anyway, thought this might be something your readers could use to improve their metrics, and thanks for the great read on creating effective landing pages!

Thanks for the article, Larry. I enjoyed your viewpoints. I tend to view CLP metrics in much the same way I would PPC. Naturally, I want site entrances from the page, which tends to be what 90% of what we digital folks are geared towards, TRAFFIC TRAFFIC TRAFFIC! However, what they do once there is the true mother load. This is why a continual state of dissection and tweaking is key. There is no "one and done" with landing pages. I have maybe 3-5 seconds to capture enough of that viewers attention so that they will further interact with my site.

With all the time, effort and money that goes into landing a potential customer on one of my sites, said effort is wasted if I don't give them what they need at the moment of truth. This is where the intangibles come into play. There is an artistry to this buiz that extends far beyond just being a technical wizard, which is where my overly analytical brain tends to get me into trouble.